I am Ella Kate, Ella Kate is me!

Sunday morning with Daddy :)

It's been a couple of weeks....

Weekend with Gama and Aunt Katey and Ella Kate's new best friend is born!

My mom and her sister, Aunt Katey, came for a long weekend. We had a great time. Ella Kate got her love tank filled up to overflowing and the rest of us filled up our tummies! We didn't do anything too exciting, but it was wonderful to have them visit.

Ella Kate is ready to start walking, ok, maybe not quite yet, but she "stands" really well. She "talks" a whole lot and is getting to be cuddly, too. She's in a "hold me" mood, so having extra cuddle bunnies around was helpful.

We got a jumperoo for our little wiggle worm since she tries to "jumperoo" all over us. It's so fun to watch her! She's not quite tall enough yet, so I put a pillow under her feet and that seems to work. Watch her little feet go, maybe she'll be a runner, too!

Oh, and how can we forget Miss JuJu? Ella Kate's newest best friend, Julianna Mae, was born last Friday. I told you Kristen was having a girl! I used to consider Kristen a really good friend until I heard she pushed less than one time!!! I mean, really, who does that? You know how they say count to 10 as you push during the contraction? Kristen got to 4 and they said stop! For such a small girl, she's a regular birthing machine!!! JuJu (as Chase, her big brother, calls her) was almost the same size as Ella Kate, so it will be fun to watch them grow up together!

Knoxville Zoo!

With this unusually warm weather (75 degrees today!) we just had to get outside. Melissa and her boys invited us to join them for an afternoon at the zoo. We had such a good time that we will definitely be getting a membership soon. Chris was jealous and says that if the weather is good he wants to go this weekend!

So these are the Mancini boys with Ella Kate. John will be 3 in May and George will be 1, also in May. These are two boys that we won't mind Ella Kate hanging out with!

John was excited to be at the Zoo-- he was climbing all over everything! My favorite, I wish I had a shot of it, was John saying to the monkeys "Hi Blue Monkeys!" It was so matter of fact, like "Blue Monkeys" were their names.

Mel is probably my "oldest friend," not necessarily my first one, but the one I've kept the longest. We met as freshman in college and just clicked right away. By the end of our freshman year people would call us Kat and Mel interchangeably-- we'd respond to either name! We lived together sophomore and junior years and have so many crazy and fun memories. Since neither of us is from TN we never ever would have imagined both of us ending up here, much less living in the same city! We literally live 10 minutes from each other! Now that we both have kids (obviously Mel got a head start on that one!) we will have so much fun watching them play and grow together.

Just behind Mel on the friendship time line are Nicole, Amy-Chris, and Shannon. When they said, in our freshman orientation, that these are the friends we'd keep for life I'm sure we all rolled our eyes. Who knew that 12 years later we'd all still be so close?! We've shared so many life changes- jobs, houses, pets, marriages, deaths and births-- I'm blessed to have such amazing friends in my life!

EKV's First Superbowl Sunday

You may recognize Meg from EK's first few pictures. I've already contracted her as Ella Kate's future babysitter! She's only 8 right now, but I can tell she's gonna be a great babysitter soon.

Seth's lap seems to be one of EK's favorite places. She fit in that nook perfectly and just sat there contently and observed.

Sweet Miss Lacey

Lacey is our sweet loveable floppy dog and our "first born." We assumed she'd be the one who mothered the baby and would hover and be protective. We were surprised to learn that Abbey was more in tune with our new addition and Lacey kinda shirked away. This is one of the first shots of Lacey lounging so close, and calmly, near Ella Kate. She did try to lick EK once before and EK cried. I don't think she cried b/c of Lacey, it was just a coincidence (as I've said before, EK doesn't discriminate about who she'll cry for!), but it made Lacey stay away. Finally she seems to be warming up to the new little human in the house!

This is a shot of EK so tuckered out on her rainforest play mat that she actually fell asleep! I let her sleep there for as long as she would (maybe 15 min)-- as my friend Sarah says, "let sleeping babies lie!"

On a fun baby note: I'm pretty sure she's eliminated the last feeding of the night, usually around 10ish. Three times last week she fought us during that feeding and I was complaing about it to Kristen who said "maybe she's not hungry." Hmmm.... wonder why we couldn't come up with that on our own! So at her suggestion we didn't try to force that feeding, and since last Friday EK's skipped it and slept until the middle of the night (around 2 or 3 am) feeding. Then the amazing happened last night: we fed her at 6:30 and put her down around 8:30 and she slept all the way until 5:30 am! I'm curious to see if it was a one time thing or if it happens again.

I forgot to mention that two of Ella Kate's best girlfriends were born 3 weeks ago! Bree Simpson was born to Shay and Brian, and Lila Hagan was born to Maria and Carr. Up to this point most of my friends have had little boys, so girls are a new and fun development. One more may arrive next week when Kristen's secon baby is born. I'm convinced it's a girl, but you can go to her website and post your own opinion!